When using pip to install instead of distribution specific package manangers, e.g. via apt-get or ports, it is simpler to choose exactly which version one wants to use.
It may however be easier to install via distribution specific package mangers but note that they may provide an earlier version than what is available via pip.

If you plan to use TLS or SSL in master configuration (e.g. to fetch resources over HTTPS using twisted.web.client), you need to install Buildbot with tls extras:

Buildbot master and buildbot-worker are installed using the standard Python distutils process.
For either component, after unpacking the tarball, the process is:

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

where the install step may need to be done as root.
This will put the bulk of the code in somewhere like /usr/lib/pythonx.y/site-packages/buildbot.
It will also install the buildbot command-line tool in /usr/bin/buildbot.

If the environment variable $NO_INSTALL_REQS is set to 1, then setup.py will not try to install Buildbot’s requirements.
This is usually only useful when building a Buildbot package.

To test this, shift to a different directory (like /tmp), and run:

buildbot --version
# or
buildbot-worker --version

If it shows you the versions of Buildbot and Twisted, the install went ok.
If it says “no such command” or it gets an ImportError when it tries to load the libraries, then something went wrong.
pydocbuildbot is another useful diagnostic tool.

Windows users will find these files in other places.
You will need to make sure that Python can find the libraries, and will probably find it convenient to have buildbot on your PATH.

If you cannot or do not wish to install the buildbot into a site-wide location like /usr or /usr/local, you can also install it into the account’s home directory or any other location using a tool like virtualenv.

If you wish, you can run the buildbot unit test suite.
First, ensure you have the mock Python module installed from PyPI.
You must not be using a Python wheels packaged version of Buildbot or have specified the bdist_wheel command when building.
The test suite is not included with the PyPi packaged version.
This module is not required for ordinary Buildbot operation - only to run the tests.
Note that this is not the same as the Fedora mock package!

If any of the tests fail for reasons other than a missing mock, you should stop and investigate the cause before continuing the installation process, as it will probably be easier to track down the bug early.
In most cases, the problem is incorrectly installed Python modules or a badly configured PYTHONPATH.
This may be a good time to contact the Buildbot developers for help.